Monkees star headlines Comic Con at Hanover Mall

Monday

Jul 24, 2017 at 5:00 PM

Adam Silva adsilva@wickedlocal.com @AdamSMariner

"Hey, hey..." Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees was visiting the South Shore this past weekend as the headliner for the Southcoast and Northeast Comic Con and Collectibles extravaganza at the Hanover Mall Event Center.

Comic and pop culture fans of every age turned up for the second Comic Con this year at the Hanover Mall, with the first taking place this past March.

Voiceover actor Billy West, from “Futurama,” “Doug,” “Ren and Stimpy” and “Space Jam” and James Tolkan, from “Back to the Future,” “Top Gun” and “Masters of the Universe” also signed autographs and posed for pictures during the two-day event that took place Saturday, July 22 and Sunday, July 23.

“I’ve been doing shows like this for the past decade or so like this,” said Dolenz. “It depends, where sometimes it’s just five or six a year and sometimes it’s only a couple. Once you do one in a certain city, you don’t go back there the next year. You have to wait a couple of years before you head back.”

While the initial run of The Monkees ended almost five decades ago, sometimes three generations of fans within one family will attend conventions to meet Dolenz. The eldest generation of the family are typically the ones that ask the most questions, he said.

A third show at the Hanover Mall is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 9 and Sunday, Dec. 10 with a theme of “A Holiday Shopping Show for Nerds and the People Who Love Them.”

“You’ll be able to find items for the nerds in your life that you won’t be able to find other places,” said event organizer Gary Sohmers. “The (December) show will be very different, as every show is different than others. It’s not supposed to be the same. Always something new to experience and it’s guaranteed not to be boring!”

The July show did have far less crowds than the March show, which Sohmers attributes to the warm weather over the weekend. The show opened at 10 a.m. on both days and the mall doesn't open until noon on Sundays, so alternate entrances to the show had to be used.

Coincidentally, San Diego Comic Con, the biggest comic con in the country and perhaps the world, was this past Thursday through Sunday. The comic convention world has exploded in the past two decades, with only a handful of major shows in the country, with New York Comic Con being the second largest.

"This is my third comic con that I've been to and the video games I've played here have been the best part," said Jack Dubrovsky, who came dressed as Peter Quill/Star Lord from "Guardians of the Galaxy." "I definitely want to come back here in the future and to other shows."

West has strong ties to New England, as he spent much of his childhood in Roslindale and his mother lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. He even recorded a song, “Another Cape Cod Summer This Year.”

With 220 credits on the Internet Movie Database, choosing a favorite character he has portrayed is next to impossible.

“I really have put one thousand percent into everything I’ve ever done,” West said. “If you can really boil it down, I really sounded like Frye [from ‘Futurama’] when I was 25. That’s the voice I chose to use, which is whiny, nasally and complaining, which is how I sounded back then. So I guess I could say Frye. He’s really an everyman. Everyone really loved him. Women loved him and what I know about women is they love a project [laughs]. I wanted him to be Leela’s project. He has a long way to go.”